In the study of evolution, the only real way to authenticate the theory is to study the past, to find if it happened. Based on the theory of evolution, there are several things one would expect to find in the fossil records, which are virtually the only way to study the development of life over time without getting into speculation and theory. The fossil record is the best and perhaps only way to prove or disprove evolution. The question then becomes, what do the fossils have to say?
The Fossils
However surprising it may seem, the fossil record almost totally contradicts evolution. Looking only at the fossil evidence, one would never come to the conclusion that evolution happened. With Darwinian theory, one would expect to find fossils of hundreds of thousands of slightly different transitional forms between species. From fish to amphibian, from reptile to bird, etc. However, this is not the case. Rather the opposite is true. Species appear quite suddenly and without any evolutionary evidence, remain stasis over time, changing almost not at all, and then either die, or remain with us today. Take the Cambrian explosion. This period is often called such because of the very sudden appearance of a startling variety of complex and fully formed organisms such as clams, snails, worms, brachiopods, sea lilies and other equally complex creatures. There are no previous transitional forms to link these creatures to. Previous to this period, the only organisms found are both soft bodied, microscopic, and typically unicellular. "The facts of greatest general importance are the following. When a new phylum, class, or order appears, there follows a quick, explosive diversification so that practically all orders or families know appear suddenly and without any apparent transition." This was said by the evolutionist Goldschmidt many decades ago, but it still rings remarkably true in almost every aspect to this day. Transitional forms are nonexistent (except for a few misconceptions, which I’ll cover later). This is a severe problem, as the fossil record is very complete, and no long can the "not enough fossils" excuse be used. We have thousands upon thousands of fossils, and not a single one of them is a transitional form, that is, being relatively halfway between two species on the evolutionary tree.
The fact that evolution is not supported in the field of paleontology is not unknown to evolutionary professionals, and usually constitutes the biggest challenge to evolutionary theory. These expects have come up with several remarkable theories to account for this, each one becoming more fantastic, unbelievable, unproveable, and even contradictory to Darwin’s theory. At the end of the day, evolutionists still acknowledge a problem in the fossils. Take Stephen J. Gould on the matter:
The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however, reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.
The history of most fossil species includes two features inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 2. Sudden Appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and "fully formed."
The three-level, five-kingdom system may appear, at first glance, to record an inevitable progress in the history of life . . . Increasing diversity and multiple transitions seem to reflect a determined and inexorable progression toward higher things. But the paleontological record supports no such interpretation. There has been no steady progress in the higher development of organic design. We have, instead, vast stretches of little or no change and one evolutionary burst that created the whole system.
Some other statements to consider:
Darwin’s theory of natural selection has always been closely linked to evidence from fossils, and probably most people assume that fossils provide a very important part of the general argument that is made in favor of Darwinian interpretations of the history of life. Unfortunately, this is not strictly true . . . The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with Darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be. Darwin was completely aware of this. He was embarrassed by the fossil record because it didn’t look the way he predicted it would and, as a result, he devoted a long section of his Origin of Species to an attempt to explain and rationalize the differences . . . Darwin’s general solution to the incompatibility of fossil evidence was to say that the fossil record is a very incomplete one. . . . Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn’t changed much. The record of evolution is still surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time. By this I mean that some of the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse in North America, have had to be discarded or modified as a result of more detailed information—what appeared to be nice simple progression when relatively few data were available now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin’s problem has not been alleviated. . . . ---D.M. Raup
Modern apes, for instance, seem to have sprung out of nowhere. They have no yesterday, no fossil record. And the true origin of modern humans—of upright, naked, tool-making, big-brained beings—is, if we are to be honest with ourselves, an equally mysterious matter.---Lyell Watson
Oftentimes evolutionists will attempt to get around this lack of transitional forms in the record by pointing to som new promising skeleton recently uncovered that looks to be a link, so to speak. Besides the fact that these almost invariably turn out to not be links of any kind, it ignores the larger issue, mainly that there should be thousands of transitional forms, to the point that they really should be everywhere. That is what is called for in Darwinian evolution, but reality is a stark contrast.
Next: More in-depth on the Cambrian explosion.
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